


[fic] A Crooked Love (In A Straight Line Down)

by silly_cleo



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Gay Character, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Femslash, Not Canon Compliant, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-11 23:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3336908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silly_cleo/pseuds/silly_cleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Root searches for Shaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[fic] A Crooked Love (In A Straight Line Down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celaenos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/gifts).



She still got new cover identities. Every few days, she would get new details. Well, it certainly was nice to know at least one god didn’t hold a grudge. Not that she had thought the Machine would. Not that she _cared_ exactly.

Except of course she did. How could she not? And the Machine was...different now. She _had_ been different anyway, ever since Samaritan went online, but even though she had missed their constant conversations that silence hadn’t felt quite so...disappointed. Root couldn’t have explained how the silences of an artificial intelligence could sound different but there it was.

Root still used the cover identities, of course. She had to. She just didn’t let investigating what the missions that went with them might actually entail take any time away from finding Shaw.

She wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture, though. She and the Machine had argued before, but never like this. Root supposed nothing else had ever been as important to her to take this far.

Obviously part of her knew it was inconsistent. Everything she’d been telling Harold, about trusting the Machine, about her being their only chance against Samaritan, about her needing them, about being OK with not knowing the whole plan, would be true in any other circumstance. It was just this one, crucial thing. She couldn’t give up on Shaw.

*

It took such a long time of nothing. 

So many dead ends. 

What made it even worse (apart from wondering what was happening to Shaw and not even knowing for certain if-) was knowing that with the Machine’s help it could’ve been so much easier, that the Machine wouldn’t help her in this, rather than couldn’t. 

But that didn’t matter, Root had been managing without a magic voice in her ear for a long time before the Machine came along. She had pulled off much more complex jobs alone, with nothing like such a strong incentive and she could certainly do it again.

The breakthrough came, finally. A series of leads, each less shaky than the last, had led Root to a psychiatric institution (and the irony of that wasn’t lost on her).

Getting in was the easy part. It was getting out, hopefully with Shaw, that was going to be harder, and that she couldn’t really plan for.

She’d looped the feeds on the building’s security cameras remotely, and found and disabled the emergency override for all the patients’ doors. She was in the middle of hacking into the hospital’s mainframe to see if it would tell her where Shaw was when she heard the tell-tale click of a gun being cocked somewhere behind her.

“Step away from the computer, hands in the air, nice and slowly.” _Dammit. Back to an open door. Stupid. Sloppy. Should’ve incapacitated the guards._ She sighed, and complied, deciding to hope for a better opportunity. Just as well she’d kept her ski-mask on.

Suddenly, she heard the thud of a large crumpling to the floor. 

She risked a glance over her shoulder just as she was tackled violently to the ground. The shock of the impact was nothing compared to the shock of recognition.

“SHAW?”

Now that she was being pinned to the floor and had got her breath back she was sure of it. Still..

“...Root?!”

“Shaw!” Root was, for once, at a complete loss for words. She would have hugged Shaw if she could, and she suspected her eyes had been replaced with tiny cartoon hearts.

“What are you doing here?” 

…”Rescuing you, of course!” Root settled for an experimental wriggle instead. “Though I should’ve known you’d have the situation well under control.”

Shaw leapt lightly to her feet, and awkwardly offered Root a hand up. Root accepted it, and let Shaw haul her to her feet, grinning giddily to herself on the way up.

“The door to my cell suddenly opening did help a bit, I’ll admit. I assume that was you?” Root nodded. “Well, I’m so ready to get out of this place. You about done here?”

“Oh sure, Sam, I was only here to rescue some other head-case, you were just a bonus,” replied Root, a little stung.

Shaw grinned, all canary-got-the-cream at having got a rise out of her. “Thought so.”

 

*

Root hadn’t honestly thought she would get in and get out with Shaw so easily, and so didn’t have a clear plan for what the two of them would do next. Luckily, the Machine seemed to have put some thought into it, because the next cover identity Root received from her was for both her _and_ Shaw. Evidently coming back from the dead (for the second time, no less) changed the ‘one identity only’ rule.

Somehow though Root thought Shaw would go for her new identity even less than she had the old one.

*

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” - Root thought her face would crack if she smiled any harder - “we work with what we have.”

Root wondered if Shaw ever got headaches from all that rolling her eyes seemed to do.

“And these were the exact identities the Machine spit out? You didn’t have any input whatsoever.”

“Nope! All her.”

“Really? You and me have to go undercover as newlyweds and you’re telling me you had nothing to do with arranging it?”

“That’s right! Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”

*

They checked into the hotel using their new cover identities without a hitch.

As they were walking towards the elevator, key-card in hand, Root slipped her arm through Shaw’s and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“Honey-bunch, we’re supposed to be deliriously in love. I know this isn’t your idea of a good time, but could you at least pretend, just till we get upstairs?”

Shaw stiffened almost imperceptibly. Root would have missed it if she hadn’t been been standing so close to her, but it was gone in an instant, and Shaw relaxed, and put her hand on the arm Root had through hers.

“Sure,” Shaw said, with a smile that sent a thrill, equal parts terror and arousal, right through her.

*

Their room, of course, had only one bed.

“I’ll take the floor,” Root said quickly, not wanting to actually push Shaw too far, especially when she’d so far given no hint of what had happened to her in the past few weeks.

“It’s fine, Root. The bed’s huge, and you don’t actually take up all that much space for a bean-pole.”

Root fumbled for an appropriate response, trying not to read too much into Shaw not minding to share the bed.

The moment passed. Shaw gave her an odd, indecipherable look but made no further comment. Root was starting to feel like their last encounter at the stock exchange was either a dream or a really big elephant tromping around the room.

*

Two (separate) showers and a change of clothes later (Root had brought some of Shaw’s clothes, just in case) Root felt much better equipped to make light of the situation.

“Want to go out for dinner, peaches?”

“You are having way too much fun with this.” Shaw rolled her eyes. Root wished she’d thought to start keeping score how many times she could make Shaw do that a long time ago.

“Is there such a thing as too much fun? Come on, pumpkin, aren’t you hungry?”

“Will you cut that out? And we could just order room service. That way I can eat without having to pretend to be nice to you.”

“We can’t have _that_. Room service it is.”

*

Root flopped on her back in the thankfully huge bed, holding herself awkwardly as close to her edge as possible.

Over dinner, they had agreed they’d make their way back to New York the next day and make contact with the others then.

She blew out a slightly shaky sigh. She was thrilled to have Shaw back, and apparently relatively unscarred, but, when she’d allowed herself to imagine their reunion, this wasn’t how she’d pictured it at all. 

She had always been so careful never to push Shaw too far out of her comfort zone, she had no idea how to proceed when Shaw was the one to have done the pushing. Neither, apparently, did Shaw. She was used to getting the brush-off to her advances, but there was an edge to it now, which would have been hard to take even before...well, before.

“Root?”

She swallowed. “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say thanks. You know, for coming to find me. I…” Root held her breath. “...I sort of assumed you guys would think I was dead. I wasn’t expecting a rescue.”

Root let the breath out again in another shaky sigh and deliberately kept her gaze up towards the ceiling, in the vain hope this would be easier to say in the dark. 

“Sameen...I need to you to know, I was prepared to tear down the world to find you. Even if only so I could bury you.” She felt tears bubble up behind her eyes, and angrily tried to swallow them down. “I… John and I caused absolute mayhem trying to get you back. Harold, even the Machine said it was a lost cause. But I _couldn’t_.” She swallowed hard again and swiped angrily at a few tears that were definitely not following orders. _Talk about being outside comfort zones._ She tried to sniff subtly, and failed.

Shaw hadn’t made a sound during her entire speech, and Root certainly couldn’t face looking at her _now_. 

She was just wondering whether to get up in search of some Kleenex when she felt an arm clamp round her waist, a leg thrown over both of hers, and Shaw’s head tucked against her shoulder.

“Shaw, what?”

“Look, just...shut up, OK. We can talk about it in the morning. Maybe. No promises.”

Root smiled. _In the morning, maybe, no promises_ was a definite step up from maybe someday.


End file.
